The good news is that there are three Moms’ groups here who seem totally accepting of single Dads – totally opposite of CHS.  The bad news is that I now live in freakin’ West-Central Alabama, a part of the world that makes Monck’s Corner seem like Dubai.  In any event, good luck, Dads of Chucktown.  Take your kids to the beach.

It would seem smart to try and get everyone together and meet and feel each other out – I was about to suggest a park, but it’s too hot for that, so the beach seems like a natural place.

The last time I tried to get everyone to meet up, it was like herding cats – nobody could get together at the same time, with school and activities and weird work schedules and all that…  SO, let’s try this:  Let’s pick a day – I’m thinking a Saturday – and a beach – I’m thinking Sullivan’s Island down around 29 1/2 – there’s calm shallow water there and parking is generally pretty easy.

That being said, I propose Saturday, July 10, at 10 am.  I’ll go a step further and say I’ll be there then, and hope any and all of you can be as well.

yay.

Time to look for setting up play dates – weekends mostly for me. The kids are just 4 and 1.5 years old, if it matters.

The first time I rotated the loop to the ‘jump’ setting, it broke so that it can only be used as a loop.  Fine by me, but first sign of a piece of junk.  The catapult is too hard for a three-year-old to pull back on his own, which means hours of “Again, Daddy!!” hell for you.  The track doesn’t align with the loop well, something we had to fix (semi-permenantly) with scotch tape.  After an hour of play, the rubber band wore to the point where no car would execute the loop.  Replacement with a bigger band made it work again, but made it even more impossible for a kid to pull back the launcher.  (“Again, Daddy!!  Again!!”)

In short, this thing is a total piece of crap, and you should take your $20 to a garage sale and buy a box of old track to make a decent, gravity-powered racetrack for your kids.

Coming next week:  PlasmaCar review

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I can tell you that I have been very busy keeping our now-7-month-old along with the 3 year old, and Spring is looking to be a much better season than Winter was.  We will be planning an outing to Riverfront Park at the Navy Base in N Chas for this coming Saturday – weather permitting, of course – and if you all want to show up, please do.  We’ll probably head down there at about 10:30 or 11 am, stay long enough to have a quick picnic at least.  I’m not sure how many of you all get notified by posts on this blog, so I’ll email you all seperately too.